Posted on Saturday, December 6th, 2008 at 4:59 am CET

One of my favorite blogs in my Google Reader is The Big Picture from the Boston Globe. Each post features a series of incredible photos from recent news stories. Here are some of my favorite features from the last few months. Click each photo to go to the post for more.

Venice was under water this week and this set of incredible photos shows locals going around their normal business and tourists taking in the sights as they are knee-deep in water. We were lucky enough to visit Venice twice on our holidays in Italy and can’t imagine what it must be like to have your whole city underwater.

This series shows Mumbai last Monday after the smoke had cleared following the terrible attacks last week. This photo at a train station in Mumbai reminds me of the chaos at train stations when we traveled around Rajasthan two years ago. What an incredible country.

I’m a huge space fan and love to watch shuttle launches, spacewalks and landings on NASA tv. These are some beautiful pictures of the International Space Station as it turned 10 last month.

I can’t get my head around the building spree in Dubai and the huge skyscraper they’re building in the middle of this photo. The Burj Dubai, at 707 meters, is the tallest structure in the world and will be completed in September next year. They are building so many huge new buildings there … it is said that about 15% of the world’s construction cranes are in Dubai.

California keeps being plagued by wildfires and these photos of the big fires in November are incredible. This photo shows some houses burnt while ones next door don’t have a scratch.

I really hope to be able to visit Peru once in my life and see Machu Picchu. These are some amazing photos of the Incan ruins.

These Narwhals in Arctic Bay in Canada are pushing through the ice to catch a breath. They are just unreal with those tusks. As if they’re straight out of a fairy tale! Many more cool animal photos in this post for World Animal Day in October.

Beautiful pictures of our Sun. Check out that huge solar flare!

This post has lots of wonderful pictures of London, seen from above at night. This is the financial district.

There were huge floods in Iowa and Illinois this past June. This huge tornado funnel came down in Orchard, Iowa, and then went straight up into the clouds. Scary stuff!

These guys are emptying bales of black plastic balls into the Ivanhoe reservoir in Los Angeles to protect the water from sunlight to prevent it from going bad.

A big stain of palm oil invades the shores of Colombia in April. Many more stunning environment photos in this post.